6 comments

I feel that people were too harsh on the Irate Gamer. We accept that there are dozens of copycats in the food industry, the movie industry, and the gaming industry. Why was it such a problem when someone follows AVGN closely?

This wasn’t a cut throat industry. It was a bunch of kids having fun with their free time while making a few bucks for their trouble. Not much different then your local no name band playing cover songs they never got the legal rights to play.

Maybe I’m biased because I’ve been a long time fan of both Irate gamer and AVNG even to this day. Guru Larry accurately points out that Irate Gamer has sold out but he still does release the occasional old school video which I’m quick to watch and enjoy.

Because he copied him without actually learning about the games. He was a bad copy, who just made up excuses to get mad at things. He made tons of mistakes. He actually would lift complaints from other sites and even the AVGN himself.

And most of those copycats you mention are treated similarly by the fans of the original. Only if they differentiate themselves are they treated otherwise.

And the Irate Gamer was not a kid doing things about what he loved. He copied because he saw the AVGN, saw he made money, and thought he could do it without the actual knowledge that any of the other reviewers had.

Right, this wasn’t a case of “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”–it was straight-up plagiarism. Using the band analogy, it’d be more like taking a song from a popular band, changing the title, and trying to pass it off as an original song … and when people call you on it, you just ignore them, pretend like you’ve never heard of the band, and keep doing it.